Glimmer of Hope

by Sarah M. Eden

  “When have I ever acted otherwise?”

  Perhaps it was the sincerity she managed to force into her tone that grated on him so instantly. Civility? Respect? Did the woman even know the meaning of those words? Carter snapped his head in her direction and felt his jaw tighten.

  “I will assume that question was intended to be rhetorical,” he said. “I don’t imagine you are truly inviting an in-depth discussion of past behavior.”

  He saw the little color in Miranda’s face fade further as their eyes locked. For a fleeting moment, emotion showed in her eyes again, but it disappeared so quickly he didn’t have time to identify it. Surprise, maybe. Perhaps a little fear. He hoped, if nothing else, it was the dawning of understanding—that the tide had turned, and he would not be so easily duped again, that she did not have the last word in this marriage.

  “No.” The flicker of feeling in her face hadn’t settled in her voice. She spoke evenly, matter-of-factly. “There are a great many topics I would rather not explore.”

  Ignoring their grievances might be the only way to maintain peace between them. He need only endure her company for a fortnight, then he could return to living his life without thinking about her. It was the only way, he’d long since discovered, to keep from driving himself mad wondering how she’d managed to deceive him so entirely.

  They proceeded to dinner. Miranda didn’t speak through the course of the entire meal. He remained behind after she took her leave, as was expected in formal dinners. He spent the entire twenty minutes thinking over their encounter.

  Had he been firm enough? Too autocratic? Was she put in her place or had the battle only just begun? He couldn’t say and found the situation frustrating. If ever he needed to feel in charge of a situation, it was now, and yet, he didn’t.

  There are a great many topics I would rather not explore. That was to be the tactic, it seemed. Avoid personal conversation and anything that might lead to difficult and uncomfortable questions between them.

  Miranda was seated by the fireplace when he entered the drawing room. She sat precisely as she had stood in the room earlier: still, almost unnervingly serene.

  Carter disliked that she didn’t seem uncomfortable when he felt ready to jump out of his skin at the slightest sound or movement. Was she not ruffled at all? Not affected even the slightest bit by their unexpected reunion?

  Perhaps she wasn’t ignoring their past so much as she was unbothered by it.

  Carter sat in a chair directly across from her. “You didn’t used to sew.” He casually leaned back, forcing his features into a look of complete unconcern.

  “No.” She continued to stitch without looking up.

  “Are there any other newfound hobbies I should know about?” Her continued stillness rubbed him the wrong way. “I would hate for our guests to think we know nothing about each other.” He exaggerated the word our to point out that she was the outsider here. She didn’t so much as flinch. Could nothing crack her icy exterior?

  “I have become an avid walker.” Miranda’s eyes remained fixed on the material in her lap.

  “Ah.” Carter couldn’t tell if she was mocking him or being honest. The flickering light of the fire added to the unreadable nature of her expression.

  “I attempted watercolors but found I had no aptitude for it.” Miranda tied off a thread. “The only thing I could convincingly paint was mud.”

  Carter fought a traitorous twitch in his lips. Miranda still hadn’t looked up and didn’t realize she’d nearly broken his composure with her quip. He quickly had himself in hand once more.

  “And I have developed a fondness for hawthorn berries,” she added.

  “Fascinating,” Carter replied dryly. All she would tell him of the past three years was that she walked, sewed, and enjoyed berries?

  She didn’t reply but continued sewing. After a few minutes had passed in heavy silence, she spoke again. “And what of you, Carter? Have you any new interests?”

  “I have gained some influence in the party,” Carter said, infusing enough pride in his words that he thought for sure they would thoroughly impress her. She didn’t appear moved. “And I am quite in demand in society.” Carter rose to his feet, thinking frantically through his list of achievements, searching for something that would appropriately awe Miranda. “I helped pass the Slave Trade Act last year.”

  “Did you really?” She looked at him then and seemed impressed. No. More than impressed. She looked almost pleased behind that placid demeanor. “That must have been very gratifying.”

  Carter nodded, feeling a prickle of disappointment. So much for platitudes and praise from his wife. Very gratifying, she’d said. A good brisk ride was “gratifying.” A round with Gentleman Jackson could even be “gratifying.” Being instrumental in passing an historical act of Parliament was far greater than that. It made a man feel like he had done something important with his life, something intrinsically right.

  “How long had you been involved with the Slave Trade Act?” Miranda asked.

  Despite his determination to remain aloof, Carter began talking, recalling the months he’d spent aiding with the drafting and rewording of the act, the hours upon hours of debate. This was how he’d once pictured spending his evenings: sharing his work with Miranda, talking through his accomplishments and concerns. He lost himself in the retelling. Seeing that act passed was perhaps his proudest career achievement to date.

  The clock struck the hour, and Carter realized he’d been speaking for a full thirty minutes. He’d enjoyed having someone to talk to. He felt enough in charity with Miranda to offer her a smile—that much he could give her, an acknowledgement that she’d been civil and courteous.

  But when he looked back at the fireplace, he saw that she was asleep. So much for sharing his life with his wife. How much of his heartfelt recounting had she dozed through? At least she’d done that before he’d started thinking of her as human again. Now he could despise her as much as he’d decided to over the past three years.

  But heartless or not, he couldn’t very well leave her slumped in a chair all night. Somehow, ringing for the servants to see to her felt humiliating—like he wasn’t capable of taking charge of his own wife. Not that any of them could be ignorant of the situation to some degree at least.

  “I’ll have to carry her up,” Carter grumbled.

  Perhaps she’d wake up in the morning confused and would have to think over how she’d come to be there. That ought to give her a moment’s pause. He didn’t doubt it would be the last time she’d fall asleep in his exclusive company. Next time, she’d listen to him and realize the kind of man she’d so carelessly tossed aside.

  Carter lifted her sewing off her lap—a blanket, it appeared to be. Small and simple. For someone in the parish, perhaps? He laid it across a nearby chair.

  “Come on,” he muttered, slipping one arm behind her back and the other beneath her knees and lifting her easily from the high-backed chair.

  She was light—far too light. For a minute, he found himself studying her. She was decidedly thinner than he remembered. Carter told himself quite firmly that he didn’t care and made his way out of the drawing room and up the staircase.

  He was surprised that she didn’t wake up as he carried her. Not only were his footsteps occasionally jarring, but his heart also pounded so loudly in his chest he doubted there was a soul asleep in the entire house besides her. She really shouldn’t have affected him that way any longer.

  She seemed strangely vulnerable in that moment, frail and fragile. Any gentleman would have been moved by such a picture.

  With a little ingenuity, Carter managed to open the door to her sitting room and walk inside. The door to the bedchamber was mercifully open—door handles were tricky with no free hands.

  One step inside and he was greeted by a nearly frantic whisper. “Laws! Is her ladyship unwell?”

  A maid, no older than eighteen, he’d guess, looked wide-eyed at Miranda, asleep in his arms. One
would think he’d come in with her bloodied corpse draped over his shoulder.

  “She fell asleep by the fire.” Carter left out the “while I was talking to her” that hovered on his lips.

  “Well, set her down,” the maid instructed. “I’ll see to her.”

  “Gladly.” Carter kept most of his perturbation out of his voice. Having Miranda in his arms after three years had begun to undermine his anger. Without anger, Carter had no idea how he was going to survive the next few weeks.

  Chapter Three

  MIRANDA STOOD AT A WINDOW in the north sitting room, watching the light rain continue to fall. It had been raining when she’d awoken that morning, and she’d been a little confused at not being able to recall going to bed the night before. By midmorning the rain had let up, but the ground would still be quite wet. Now it was past teatime, and she ought to have been out walking. Trudging through the mud had, in the past, made her walks difficult and unpleasant, so she’d decided to forgo her daily exercise.

  She pressed the palm of her hand against the cold glass of the window. There would be no escaping the house today, nor would she be escaping Carter and his critical words and glances.

  He now sat near the fireplace, presumably reading a London newspaper only a couple of days out of date. She had felt his gaze turn toward her several times, had even spied his perusal out of the corner of her eye. He was looking for faults, flaws, the way he had every minute they’d been together since his arrival.

  Though neither had spoken the agreement out loud, they were avoiding their past and their painful separation. But she felt his condemnation just as surely as if he’d declared it from the rooftops.

  “Is there someplace you are supposed to be, Miranda?” Carter’s deep voice interrupted her thoughts.

  She shook her head, watching the tree just outside the window sway in the breeze.

  “You seem anxious over the weather.” She had the distinct impression he was laughing at her.

  “I told you last night I am an avid walker.” Miranda kept her voice even with tremendous effort. What she would have given for a kind word from him three years ago! What I would give now, a traitorous voice whispered in her head. “Wet weather interferes with that hobby of mine.”

  “Perhaps an invigorating dozen or so laps around the conservatory.”

  There again was that contemptuous tone.

  Miranda turned to look at him and studied his face for any sign of the loving gentleman she’d married. “Why must you mock me with every word?” Miranda quietly demanded, determined to salvage her pride if nothing else.

  “You would prefer empty compliments? Come now, Miranda. There will be plenty of time for playacting after our guests arrive. I prefer to deal in honesty until then.”

  “Honesty?” Though she spoke quietly, there was tension in her voice. His dishonesty had torn them apart. How could he sit there in the home she considered hers and speak to her of honesty? “You wish for honesty?”

  He folded back the next page of his paper with arrogant indifference. “If you can manage it.”

  He questioned her honesty? His broken promises and betrayals had caused her no end of grief, and yet he suggested she was the duplicitous one.

  Miranda blinked back the sudden stinging at the back of her eyes. He had grown so cold during their separation. “You have changed, Carter,” she whispered.

  “Perhaps you simply didn’t know me very well.” Carter shrugged as he refolded the newssheet.

  “Sometimes I wonder if I knew you at all.” Miranda turned back to face the window and the downpour that had started outside. She’d promised herself four months after arriving at Clifton Manor that she would never cry over Carter Harford again. She had admittedly shed an occasional tear but had always kept herself under control. She had no intention of breaking down now, not when he was intent on being cruel.

  If you can manage it. How could he accuse her of dishonesty when everything he’d pretended to be when he was courting her—thoughtful, tender, dependable, compassionate—had proven utterly untrue?

  She heard the door to the sitting room open and turned her head in anticipation. Had one of the guests arrived? Timms held the door open as a gentleman stepped inside.

  Mortified, Miranda heard a sob escape her throat as she realized the identity of the new arrival. “Grandfather,” she whimpered before nearly running across the room into the arms he held open for her.

  “This is a very agreeable way to be greeted.” Grandfather’s rumbling laugh shook them both. “Makes a grandfather grateful to have returned a day early.” His smile twitched his white mustache. “Did anything noteworthy happen during my absence?”

  Miranda opened her mouth to reply, only to find herself unable to hold back the floodgates any longer. The shock of Carter’s sudden appearance, his unceasing disapproval, and the burden of hundreds of carefully hidden-away memories came crashing down on her in that moment.

  “Tush, dear.” Grandfather’s comforting voice reassured her. “’Twill be all right now. Grandfather will make it all right, you’ll see.”

  But she couldn’t seem to bring her emotions under their usually tight control.

  “Calm yourself, Miranda.” Grandfather’s insistence grew with every minute she continued to cry into his coat. “What has overset you to such a degree?”

  “Unwelcome reminders of her past,” Carter said.

  Miranda felt Grandfather stiffen even as her last reserves of endurance began to slip away. Grandfather pulled her ever so slightly behind him so he stood to a degree between Carter and her. “Lord Devereaux.” He acknowledged the younger gentleman, who stood not far from them, with icy civility.

  Miranda risked a glance at Carter, only to be taken aback at the flash of surprise she saw there. He apparently hadn’t expected to find defiance in Mr. George Benton. But Miranda’s grandfather, when provoked, could be a hard man.

  “I hope for your sake, young man, that you have not been mistreating my granddaughter,” Grandfather said in a tone that was at once authoritative and threatening. “I recall telling you some four years past that I would not abide any unkindness toward her.”

  Miranda buried her face once more in Grandfather’s coat in an attempt to drown out the memories he unwittingly conjured up. He had told Carter those very words on the day they’d sought Grandfather’s blessing for their betrothal. Miranda had never been happier than she was in those early days with Carter. And it had all come crashing down around her. He had deceived her. He had deceived them all.

  She resisted the urge to lean more heavily against her grandfather—she knew very well he was not as strong as he’d once been. He would be eighty years old on his next birthday, and his age had begun to catch up with him.

  But he must have felt her sag, for suddenly his attention was all on her. “Have you had your nap, my girl?” he asked tenderly.

  “Not yet,” Miranda whispered.

  “I daresay you need it more today than usual.” He patted her head as he always did when he didn’t want his concern to show. “I’ll walk you up.”

  They left the sitting room without even a backward glance at Carter. Miranda wondered what his reaction was: if he sneered at them as they left or looked smug or perhaps felt the slightest bit ashamed of his treatment of her. He had indeed changed, and not for the better. He once was the kind of man she could trust with her every worry and concern. This Carter, however, could not be. Though he heavily hinted she would treat him with dishonesty, she knew full well she would do better to treat him with an enormous degree of caution. She would show him no weaknesses and no vulnerabilities. If she kept her thoughts and emotions and worries hidden from him, he couldn’t hurt her again.

  “How long has he been here?” Grandfather asked the moment they stepped into her private sitting room and he closed the door behind them.

  “Since yesterday afternoon.”

  “Fortunate, then, that I came earlier than planned.” Grandfather guide
d her to her bedchamber, where Hannah waited for her. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have gone to Devon after all.”

  “Nonsense,” Miranda said. “You’ve gone without me before. There was no reason not to again. Besides, your business was urgent.”

  “Nothing is more urgent than your well-being, my girl,” Grandfather answered with feeling.

  She sat in the chair at her dressing table, suddenly weary and in desperate need of her much-despised daily nap. Grandfather stepped into her sitting room while Hannah silently prepared her for sleep. In a matter of minutes, Miranda was tucked warmly beneath her blankets and Grandfather had returned to her bedside.

  “Would you prefer to leave Clifton Manor until Devereaux departs?” he asked.

  But the words had barely left Grandfather’s lips before Miranda was shaking her head. “I have made this my home. I cannot leave now.”

  “Even if he makes you miserable?”

  Miranda didn’t have an answer. She couldn’t bear the thought of leaving—too much had happened at Clifton Manor since her arrival to even consider changing residences. She knew on some instinctive level that to retreat now would mean the end of any claim she had to her home.

  “I intend to have a talk with that—”

  “Please don’t, Grandfather.” Miranda reached for his wrinkled hand. “He will not be here long. I can endure that much.”

  “I think you have endured quite enough from him already.”

  She knew that look of his. Grandfather was moments from going back downstairs and boxing Carter’s ears. Despite all she’d been through, she didn’t want him to. Keeping the peace felt far more urgent than clearing the air. Carter would not remain long—London was likely calling to him as it always had. He would be gone soon enough. All that mattered was having the house to herself again once he left.